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User talk:DeGraffJE/Archive 1
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We already have, for example, over 100 kB in Spanish, dozens of pages in French, and a little Russian and Norwegian, with easy ways of linking languages. A good place to start each visit is the ' ', where all edits and their authors (anonymous or signed-in) are listed. Bookmark it, maybe. (And help delete spam - unpleasant but a fact of life.) There's an email list system used to get messages to all listed members: see Genealogy:Mailing list. "Traffic" is not high, so you will not risk flooding your inbox by joining. You're invited to add your name to a category for your country - see Category:Contributors and create a category if yours is not there. Discussion of any aspect of the site, and enquiries, can be made through the Forum or on the "discussion" page associated with each article. Sign and date your contributions there (by typing "~~~~" or clicking the "signature" button), so that readers know "who to talk to" and whether your message is probably still of current interest. If you write on a user's "talk" page, that user will get an alerting message on next visit. It would be good if you could indicate on your user page how you discovered this site. Please leave a message on my talk page if you think I may help with anything! -- Phlox (Talk) 21:57, 31 May 2009 Coding Thanks- I forgot I added those internationalized messages to the Person template- it needed fixing. Currently, we are revising the way that we centrally store information, so everything you are learning about info pages and showinfo etc will be still work and all- it just will be obsolete. I wanted to warn you since you are apparently adept at reading template code. We will be encouraging people to use the new mechanism and be converting data over for them. We are using semantic mediawiki extensions, something I believe that WP will eventually have. The new templates and properties are not yet ready for prime time, but if you are curious, you can see them demonstrated in article George Spencer Geer (1836) instead of the error prone process of editing info pages (a mechanism of my creation), the new scheme uses forms. See the edit with form item in the menu bar. This stores information directly in MySQL relations so that we can do databasey things like search for people born in location, with birth date greater than somedate and less than other date. This sort of thing is partly activated due to a hack I put into the info page mechanism. Those pages go away in the future, and pages more resemble those of the geer article. -[[User:Phlox|'~'' Phlox']] 01:21, 1 June 2009 (UTC) :Thanks for the heads up! —''DeGraffJE'' talk 01:24, 1 June 2009 (UTC) family tree Note that it is customary to have the family tree at person/ancestors and person/descendants rtol 15:03, 13 June 2009 (UTC) :Thanks for the reminder. I've fixed the issue for Kathryn Anna (Endermann) DeGraff (1928-1999)/ancestors. —''DeGraffJE'' talk 15:19, 13 June 2009 (UTC) Surname categories I'm surprised that such an observant person as you are would not have noted the bold print that has been in the middle of our sitenotice (near the top of most pages) for months. See Category:Endermann (surname). — Robin Patterson (Talk) 04:38, 15 June 2009 (UTC) :I must have skimmed and dismissed that message a while ago. I now understand. —''DeGraffJE'' talk 00:06, 16 June 2009 (UTC) ::I presume you've now templated "your" other surname categories and are thinking about creating their articles if not already created. Interesting how even bold type gets missed by some people. Another example is our "Simple page for person" where the big bold type asks people to put a name in the box before the (preprinted) brackets and the dates inside the brackets, but we still get some users starting after the brackets. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 02:51, 17 June 2009 (UTC) Neat template inviting me here Some conversations are definitely better confined to one user talk page where it's necessary but tedious to copy a bit of what one's replying to. You could add your idea to (which is due for a bit of updating anyway). — Robin Patterson (Talk) 02:51, 17 June 2009 (UTC) :The idea's not mine (see Wikipedia:Template:Talkback); I just created a simplified version here for me since the actual one uses a lot of embedded templates that would be difficult to translate over to this wiki. —''DeGraffJE'' talk 00:57, 18 June 2009 (UTC) ::I've looked at the WP one, without reading every line. I don't know whether it would be difficult to import. Phlox could probably tell just by reading through. But maybe your version would be good on the Templates Wikia, which has no "talkback". — Robin Patterson (Talk) 02:44, 18 June 2009 (UTC) Redirecting Thanks for the reminder about pages marked for deletion. I've dealt with the subcategories, mostly converting to redirects because someone could easily create them again. I've started looking at the articles; they may go the same way. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 04:38, 15 June 2009 (UTC) :Nice work. It still looks pretty backed up, so hopefully some other admins will lend a hand as well. —''DeGraffJE'' talk 22:24, 16 June 2009 (UTC) ::They do no harm sitting there. Most of the articles probably deserve to be turned into redirects and therefore need individual study. Anyone really keen to get a particluar one dealt with can ask an admin specifically. Job for "spare" time. Remind me in a week or a month if you feel like it. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 02:51, 17 June 2009 (UTC) :::Well, I do have a couple things sitting there, one image in particular that I'd like removed ;) —''DeGraffJE'' talk 01:02, 18 June 2009 (UTC) talkback I stopped by because I noticed an unlogged in user archive your talk page. It seems fine but while looking at the archive, I noticed an inquiry regarding template talkback. Actually, you don't have to know anything about template coding to move most of these over. Most WP or commons templates convert just fine by copying and pasting and transfering any required images. Please do this whenever you need a template in the future. It is good practice to place a or at the bottom of the documenation page and remove the interwikis. Occaisionally there are complex templates that require more elaborate modification, but most fixes are trivial. Please notify Robin or I of the problem. Thanks for the note and we hope you enjoy contributing here. -[[User:Phlox|'~'' Phlox']] 16:20, 20 June 2009 (UTC) :I've tried transferring Wikipedia:Template:Talkback to other wikis in the past but had a hard time since it uses a lot of embedded templates (i.e., I would have to transfer over dozens of templates in order to get it to function properly as designed); so I just created a stripped down version that I can use myself (see User:DeGraffJE/tb), which is why it's in my namespace. If you would like to try to transfer the template to this wiki's Template-space so others may use it, give it a shot. —''DeGraffJE'' talk 17:51, 20 June 2009 (UTC) ::I didn't notice there was any complexity to it. Feel free to move yours to the Template space. Be bold. -[[User:Phlox|'~'' Phlox']] 17:59, 20 June 2009 (UTC) :::Take a look at the template—I've developed it to be static to my name only, for simplicity's sake. Being bold has nothing to do with it. —''DeGraffJE'' talk 18:04, 20 June 2009 (UTC) :I have a mountain of work items related to semantic mediawiki. Sorry, but if you can't manage moving the supporting templates, then it will have to wait. -[[User:Phlox|'~'' Phlox']] 18:13, 20 June 2009 (UTC) ::I see you've tried to move it here. It looks like it's getting there but still doesn't work perfectly. Anyway, whether or not you want to move it is your call—I never requested you do so but was responding to your inquiry on my talk page. I can use my template. —''DeGraffJE'' talk 18:19, 20 June 2009 (UTC) :::I'm not sure what you mean by numbers of subtemplates required. The difficulty is noted on the page there. It should not be too hard to solve. -[[User:Phlox|'~'' Phlox']] 18:59, 20 June 2009 (UTC) summaries Hello ! I'll try to use the summary, but I'm not so experienced in these kind of things and manytimes I just forget that because I allready savwed before to fill in the summary !-- Fred Bergman 19:04, 18 August 2009 (UTC) repairing spam and vandalism I see the last days more and more vandalism by anonymous users with different IP numbers but sometimes obvious the same person and also spam. How do we have to handle this. I think there doesn't exist a template to propose rolling back and blocking, as per example , . I usually delete new pages and articles for spam and replace the spam with , but what to do with the peron and his userpage, also ? but then he continues the same dag more times and nobody can stop that or can it?-- Fred Bergman 19:04, 18 August 2009 (UTC) :Tagging spam articles with is a good move. With regards to potential blocking, I'd encourage you to check out WP:WARN, which contains some warnings with varying levels of severity and situation. Vandalism, for example, has four levels. The templates don't exist on this wiki yet, but you can see some good examples of warning messages. Usually with anonymous editors, one should start out with Level 1 and work in sequence up to 4 before soliciting admin intervention at G:AN. As a caveat, do not use these generic warnings with experienced users—it is impolite. Hope this helps. —''DeGraffJE'' talk 19:52, 18 August 2009 (UTC) Thanks ! -- Fred Bergman 20:15, 18 August 2009 (UTC) ::We do have , which is probably like the first of those warnings you mention. The problem is less on Wikia than on some independent sites because of the Wikia-wide checks and procedures. Anyway, we have covering vandals, and its talk page is available for discussing whether there needs to be a better campaign against vandals and spammers. (PS, please consider being less hasty in archiving your talk page!) — Robin Patterson (Talk) 12:43, September 20, 2009 (UTC) Vandal notifications Hello. Your vandal notifications at G:AN are kind of hard to understand. I've added some hidden text on the page that should help organize these claims. Try to follow examples at Wikipedia:Administrator_intervention_against_vandalism. Thanks. —''DeGraffJE'' talk 21:41, 19 August 2009 (UTC) okay, thanks !-- Fred Bergman 21:44, 19 August 2009 (UTC) Sometimes vandals and spammers are not to be beated With some shame I have to say that now I think you should be a worthfull gain (sorry for my poor knowledge of english) for Familypedia in the battle against spam and vandalism ! Wiki Tree (recent changes has about 50% spam) is loosing the battle....see this and this citate: *User:Wikiacc :Due to frustration with the spam problem and the fact that it could have easily been prevented, I am no longer on active spam patrol. I have wasted countless hours over the past year fighting spam in a manner many times more time-consuming than was necessary. -- Fred Bergman 21:54, 19 August 2009 (UTC) Adminship I'm really sorry about what happened with your request for adminship. rtol 19:06, 22 August 2009 (UTC) Administrator Promoted. I like your WP page; the phrase "creative tension" came to mind as a synonym. — Robin Patterson (Talk) 02:37, September 28, 2009 (UTC) :Thank you! —''DeGraffJE'' talk 00:53, September 29, 2009 (UTC) Your sidebar Does it have "Create new article on it"? If so, why not give the form a try. The Person template you are using does not produce structured data. 00:04, October 21, 2009 (UTC) :The form just doesn't give me the control that I like to have and it incorporates a lot of embedded templates that make the code quite messy. It also seems to spit out a lot of unsightly stuff ("Facts about...") after the Categories. I like to keep my pages tight and clutter-free, more inline with Wikipedia articles (see example of what I strive for). —''DeGraffJE'' talk 00:20, October 21, 2009 (UTC) Your articles are great in terms of content. There is substantial missing structure. For example, with that subject's tree, you are not listing children in John August Endermann (1860-1934), or Julius John Endermann (1895-1974). As you add children, will you take care to replicate this information and keep it up to date in terms of siblings entries, spouses, and so on? If you resort to transcluded children lists, will you do it in such a way that novices can manipulate? You state you do not have the control you want. Whether or not you ever use them, I am interested in whatever deficiencies in control you perceive in the semantic templates. What control do you not have? You use a navbox on your subject's article, and those use a lot of "messy code"- actually it even uses javascript. I know because I put it in the code (actually does a much more robust job of hide/show than wikipedia's). So you use one template that is complex (lots of embedded templates), but not the other. Why is complexity of code relevant? It is not clear to users how to manipulate infoboxes, and the form bases approach allows them to do that. The form approach may not be in line with wikipedia, but it is a lot easier to manipulate infoboxes than at wikipedia. So why should we ape something that is harder to use? Wikipedia has an advantage in that there is a vast number of editors interested in even the most arcane articles and keep them consistent. Our volume of articles will dwarf that of wikipedia, and even with thousands of editors, we will never have the coverage for individuals that are of little relevance to anyone except the narrow group of their descendants. For example, it is reasonable to expect that if a husband article is updated to indicate an additional child, that the wife article would also have its list updated. This must be done manually with your methodology, and such inconsistencies would be eventually spotted in wikipedia. Do you wish to support the arguement that this will ever be the case here? If so, I'd like to hear it. This sort of thing is tedious busy work that even descendant contributors don't like bothering with. It can be automated with "messy" code. We are well into the 2nd generation of this approach. First we used info pages, and now we are using Semantic Mediawiki, which you are may not be aware is often mentioned in the WP community as a future enhancement to Wikipedia. It has been an ongoing initiative, championed by Eloquence. Anyway, your choice. Your articles will not benefit from any of the advantages of structured wikis: automatic update and consistency of reflexive properties, searching, identification of possible ancestors based on nearby places, generation of trees, automatic detection of possibly living individuals and so on and so forth because it is difficult if not impossible to extract the necessary information in an automated fashion from the error prone Person template. If you think about the volume of information of genealogical data, that factor alone makes the Person template an untenable approach for any wiki serious about being a high volume site. BTW- The facts box "unsightly stuff" is an artifact of the debugging mode we are in. It would normally not be present and I was anticipating shutting it off after the info page conversions. Perhaps it should be shut off now since it is only of interest to those verifying that the information collected corresponds. You can shut it off manually with the __NOFACTBOX__ magic word, or turn it back on with __SHOWFACTBOX__ . Perhaps since you viewed it as an unsightly impediment, do you think it likely that some newcomers would decline to contribute based on its presence? Do you recommend it be shut off now? 17:19, October 21, 2009 (UTC) :I didn't mean to open a can of worms, but you asked, so I responded. I know you put in a lot of work with the innovations here, so I hope I have not offended you. And thank you for notification about the debugging; I would be in favor of disactivating it asap. :I'll go ahead and do some testing with the forms--give it a fair shot--but no promises on me switching over completely :) Regarding the missing children in the two articles you selected, I think you just picked some work of mine that is too recent--I started those articles a couple days ago and still have on them. But yes, my current plan is to use transcluded child templates because then I can just create it once and paste it on the pages of all pertinent individuals. Maybe a novice wouldn't be able to figure that out immediately, but I don't think it is necessary to "dumb down" wiki editing completely. :On a philosophical point, I must say that, as far as this wiki is concerned, I would favor a bigger push for quality content over technological structure. Most of the articles on this wiki, and other genealogical ones for that matter, exhibit very poor quality, even though relatively few people edit here. Ancestry.com, familysearch.org, etc. already offer great structure, but I believe the value proposition of this wiki (in addition to being collaborative and evergreen) is that you can record family history, not just genealogy. You can add pictures, include stories, and piece together chronology and events. The big dogs try to accomodate this functionality, but they can't compete with the freedom of a wiki. I feel that forms, as opposed to simple templates and bona fide featured articles as benchmarks, sometimes put the focus on genealogy rather than FH, and the last thing people out there want is another genealogical database--even if it is free. This is a place where the "non-notable" ancestors can have their life's story. Anyway, I'm not saying content quality and technological structure can't coexist, I just prioritize one higher than the other at this time. :Thanks for reaching out to me, and thanks for your good work here. —''DeGraffJE'' talk 03:35, October 22, 2009 (UTC) If you would rather not investigate, that's fine with me. Some people are dead set against using cite templates. Really, I could care less, and you are not doing me any favor one way or the other. But I am still not clear what control you do not have, nor am I clear why under your philosophically motivated "prioritization" that quality articles involve filling in values for wikitext templates and manually constructing transcluded articles as opposed to a far simpler process of filling out forms, then doing the real work of adding narrative content using the rich text editor. Certainly if you personally are most comfortable editing the way Wikipedia editors have done it for the last 4 years, that is fine, but don't expect most people interested in writing family histories to have to learn how to work navboxes, person templates, and so on. It is not necessary, so why ask them to. We need something easy enough that grandmothers can use. Why? Because they are the ones that have that quality content you suggest that you care about. So put your philosophy to work. You will see that there are those here that not only share it, but are taking practical steps to realize it. 07:54, October 22, 2009 (UTC) I have done extensive research on the TOLL family, particularly in the UK, but also in USA, Australia & New Zealand. The TOLLs of Bere Ferrers will be the next tree to go on my website - www.toll-familyhistory.org Regarding the children of Rosa PAGE, two prime candidates are: HTH, Kind Regards Ken Toll (not a relative). 12:34, October 5, 2011 (UTC) Categories Please don't delete non-empty categories, such as Category:DeGraff (surname). Thurstan 21:53, February 18, 2012 (UTC) :Sorry, jumped the gun... cat is now empty. Thanks —''DeGraffJE'' talk 04:04, February 20, 2012 (UTC) Deleting valid pages Please stop it. Someone will want to create them again one day. Never mind if a category is empty now. -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 05:10, February 21, 2012 (UTC) :My apologies, just trying to run a tight ship and be considerate of Wikia server space. If you insist empty categories remain, I won't object, but it is really easy for a user to recreate a category when the appropriate time comes, too. —''DeGraffJE'' talk 15:30, February 21, 2012 (UTC)